Esme Plays Indie Games: Unravel

I love knitting, so when I was scrolling through a search for indie games and found Unravel i was like “I’ll play the shit out of that!”

What I expected: A short fun puzzle game

What I got: An insanely gorgeous game both in graphics and story line.

Character There’s really just one character, Yarny, a childhood toy brought back to life. Even though he’s not humanoid and doesn’t speak, he’s able to emote really well, I loved him right away. There are side characters of sorts presented through memories.

Plot: It’s a side scrolling puzzle game, so you wouldn’t expect much plot, but there is a story being told in the background. You can access levels through family pictures. Each picture progresses a story that’s supplementing the puzzle part of the game, you get to see the memories of the family and it’s a really endearing aspect of the game. It’s uncommon for a puzzle game to go for a deep story line and it’s pretty refreshing when it happens. When you start out the levels are rather cheery and happy, and as you progress through it they become darker and progressively more sad. There’s a pretty strong message against pollution, the darker levels of the game have you in chemical spills which ups the challenge of the game as well being part of the tone change of the story.

Gameplay: I was so frustrated at first, oh my gooood. You don’t WASD, you use the up down left right arrows on PC, and your WASD buttons do different shit. I was messing up all over the place out of reflex, I’m so accustomed to moving around with WASD that it took me a long time to snap out of that and become fluid with the game, I would imagine would work better with a controller, at least for me. Once I got fluid and really in control of moving the dude around I had a ton of fun. The puzzles were great and the use of physics was a lot of fun. Expect to die a lot, even if you’re really trying to pay attention to possible hazards you’ll probably die on the first try of a few puzzles.

Overall: 8.25/10 This was a very, very unique game with a ton of heart put behind it, this game successfully got me to care about a ball of yarn and the people who created him. It’s about a 6 hour game so it’s pretty quick and not that expensive.